While intellect may have been previously considered the major predictor for success, it is now thought that emotional intelligence plays a much more important role in life. Emotional intelligence refers to our ability to deal with our internal workings such as our behavior and our ability to make personal decisions while also guiding us in social situations. We find that emotional intelligence is a skill we learn and improve upon through life-long practice and that normal intelligence is not predictive our emotional intelligence capabilities. Whether one is introverted or extroverted also appears to have no bearing on this skill-set.

This emotional intelligence we posses can be broken down in four key categories: Self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management. Self-awareness keeps us in tune with our emotional state while self-management allows us to use those emotions to direct our behavior. Social awareness on the other hand, allows us to perceive the emotional state of those around us. Relationship management then combines our knowledge of our emotional state and the state of those around us to guide our interactions with others.

So, what’s so important about emotional intelligence?

Emotional intelligence has become the strongest predictor for success both in life and in the workplace. It’s been found that 90% of the top performers in the workplace have high levels of emotional intelligence while the bottom tier performers score low on the scale.

Due to our brains amazing ability at rewiring itself, we can further our development of this intelligence with some action and become a better version of ourselves.